Best Free Online DJ Mixer
Online DJ mixers ( ODJMs ) are a fun and free way to experience DJing for the first time. If you are interested in DJing, the cost of hardware mixers that use Vinyl or CDs can prove cost prohibitive for many beginners. Standalone Digital DJing software such as Native Instruments' Traktor and the like are not exactly cheap either.
Enter the age of "Cloud DJing". The no download revolution !
Online DJing mixers are the result of the evolution in music sharing and cloud services like SoundCloud, MixCloud and Youtube. Now, with nothing more than an internet connection and browser you can experience DJing for free and get access to libraries containing millions of songs.
Online DJing mixers are the result of the evolution in music sharing and cloud services like SoundCloud, MixCloud and Youtube. Now, with nothing more than an internet connection and browser you can experience DJing for free and get access to libraries containing millions of songs.
The technology is still somewhat in its infancy with most DJing online sites having their fair share of pros and cons when it comes to usability, presentation and performance. However I've no doubt that these sites will continue to gain in popularity as the tech improves.
Will they ever replace standalone DJing software applications ? Hard to say really - it probably depends greatly on what your intended purpose is. In some situations like a casual house party or home use, ODJMs are certainly more than capable of doing the job. As a reliable method for live performance at a club or festival .... probably not.
Anyway, lets take a look through some of the best online DJing systems currently available and some of there good and bad points.
1. Party Cloud
How many songs can an online dj mixer access ? Party Cloud is an online mixer that proudly claims having 20 milltion songs freely available to mix. That is more then enough to keep you busy mixing for the rest of your life and then some.
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| Party Cloud interface |
The secret to this wealth of audio gold lies in the fact that Party Cloud mixer sources it's tunes directly from the online music sharing site Soundcloud.
If you have never used Soundcloud before then imagine Youtube but without the videos - just the sounds. Its a great site and I use it constantly for keeping in touch with musicians and producers every day.
The first thing that you notice when you load the Party Cloud mixer is it's sleek look. It reminds me of the older version of Native Instruments Tracktor DJ mixing software which I still use to create mixes for this blog.
It has all the usual suspects there that one would expect from a mixer. There are filters, faders, bpm readers, loop options and special effects. You can easily keep track of where a song is up to via the waveform windows and if you can't be bothered to mix yourself it has a handy AutoMix option that allows you to sit back and listen through your selected playlist.
Another feature I like is the sample library which allows you to pick from a list of provided samples to play over the top of the mix. The actual contents of the library could be better though as some of them are pretty cheesy.
Synching tracks together is a breeze with the synch button - just press it once or twice for instant beatmatching. Be aware that it will change the BMP of one of your tracks in order to to pull this off.
There is a search box which allows you to instantly search the Soundcloud database and pull up your favorite songs to add to the mixer. Not all songs will show though. For example I know when I searched for my own Soundcloud tunes that they don't show. This is because Party Cloud needs to analyze songs first before they appear in the playlist.
They say they have analyzed over 1 million songs so far. But didn't you say there are over 20 millions songs ? Well, yes there are but it just means you need to select the "show all songs" feature to be able to show unanalyzed songs as well. What is the difference you may well ask. As far as I can tell unanalyzed songs just take longer to load. Not such a big problem if you are just wanting to check things out.
Another impressive feature is that this mixer also allows for headphone cueing. You will need the required hardware to do it though ( a typical Y-mono-spitter ).
If you want to create a specific playlist then the only option is to give the website access to your Facebook account. So if you don't use Facebook you are kind of screwed sorry. Creating a playlist is straightforward - search for a track, find it, favorite it. It is then added to your favorites folder.
A bit more flexibility would be nice I think such as the ability to create multiple playlists, each with their own name. That way you could create a mix for a party, for listening at home, a dub mix, a trance mix, a pop mix or whatever you want.
A bit more flexibility would be nice I think such as the ability to create multiple playlists, each with their own name. That way you could create a mix for a party, for listening at home, a dub mix, a trance mix, a pop mix or whatever you want.
Overall it's a great mixer which fun and easy to use. It is a great way for beginners to learn some of the fundamentals of mixing without having to spend a fortune on hardware CD or vinyl metiers or even on offline DJ mixing software. Even mid level to advanced level DJs would get some enjoyment out of this.
Pros
Pros
- Beautiful interface
- Huge music library
- Effective Beatmatching
- Attractive Waveforms
- Loop functions
- Automix feature
Cons
- Average filters
- Limited effects
- No multiple playlists
2. Until AM
From Finland comes the Until Am online DJ mixer. This one is kind of a work in progress and so far it looks pretty impressive as far as the interface goes.
From Finland comes the Until Am online DJ mixer. This one is kind of a work in progress and so far it looks pretty impressive as far as the interface goes.
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| Until Am interface |
Like Party Could, this one also make use of Soundcloud for its music database. It is a simple process to load songs too. Simply enter a search term in the search box then drag and drop a song onto one of the two turntables. A nice feature is that it shows the songs cover art ( from Soundcloud ) as a circular spinning disk image giving this mixer some extra double plus hipster points.
It has a good range of effects on board so you can play around with things like delay, chorus, cutoff etc. However one glaring omission seems to be the total lack of filters ( hi / mid / low ) ! Hopefully we'll see those in an updated version.
It has a similar favoriting system to Party Cloud which allows you to build a playlist of your favorite songs but once again there is no way to create multiple playlists that can be saved. It would be nice to see some kind of way to save favorites in a permanent fashion.
I don't want to be too critical of this site as it is a beta release after all. However they also say it is copyrighted 2011 so they might want to ramp up the process if they want to overtake Party Cloud.
If you are into scratching then this mixer is pretty good for that - just click on the spinning disc and scratch away.
A simple thing I would like to see is have the play buttons change to a pause button when a song is playing. It's simple things like this which can make an ODJM so much easier to use.
Perhaps the strongest feature of this mixer is the ability to load your own music from your hardrive. Simply select the "local files" tab and upload music from your collection. It loads your music really fast however it wont display any waveform of the audio you load which can be a little annoying for people who are familiar with seeing waveforms in digital DJ decks.
Speaking of local files I think it would be really cool if they could add a function to load a playlist from your iTunes library like I do with Traktor DJ.
In summary, the Until Am mixer is a a fairly basic mixer in it's current form. But it has that unpolished diamond quality about it and I think it could be a real winner with more development, especially if they listen to their over 6000 facebook fans !
Pros
- Simple interface
- Realistic turntable simulation
- Multiple effects via XY pad
- Instant download button
- Keyboard shortcuts
Cons
- No time in/out display at same time
- Lags more than Party Cloud
- Can't double click to reset controls
- Can't save playlists
- No lo/mid/hi filters
3. Muziic
Muziic players saving grace is it's ability to use songs from Youtube. It is an attractive enough looking player but that's kind of where the good news runneth out I'm afraid.
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| Muziik Mixer interface |
Apart from giving you access to all the music on the planet via a Youtube search function, it is pretty much lacking in features. There are no filters, the effects and loops are very toy like and remind me a of a dodgy DJing console from a nightclub in the 1980s.
It has a scratch function but every scratch sounds pretty much the same regardless of the tune your load or how much width you give to the scratch.
At least it does have a playlist feature which allows you to manually shuffle songs around but when I went to save the playlist it kept saying "Oops, something went wrong !" Hmmmm.
There is no synch function which makes mixing kind of tricky for beginners considering there is also no cueing, well unless you do it super old school but then there is no headphone cueing either so you would would have to mix better than and cookies and cream to pull it off.
Overall a fairly limited ODJM but at least it does give you access to YouTube. You could probably achieve just as much with two open Youtube windows anyway.
Muziic, the company does do great work as far providing easy access to internet radio feeds through their main homepage. I just don't expect them to add much to this DJ software though. They might prove me wrong and I hope they do because having access to Youtube is a great feature.
Pros
Muziic, the company does do great work as far providing easy access to internet radio feeds through their main homepage. I just don't expect them to add much to this DJ software though. They might prove me wrong and I hope they do because having access to Youtube is a great feature.
Pros
- Huge library from Youtube
Cons
- Everything else
4. Mixify Mixer
The Mixify Mixer is a decent application with enough features to keep you busy for a while.
The interface is simply and easy to follow and there a number of effects and filters available too. It makes use of Soundcloud as well as Mixify's own huge library of music.
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| Mixify mixer interface |
I like the way it has two different colored audio waveforms, a blue for the left turntable and purple for the right one. It's a simple yet nice touch I think.
It does have the occasional glitch on playback sometimes - kind of a lag/latency issue I guess. And somehow I did manage to crash the entire mixer ( and my browser ) once or twice which would be a bit disastrous if you wanted to use this for a party. So if you want to use an online mixer for a party or event then I recommend giving this one plenty of tire kicking before you drive it away.
Overall it is pretty basic but a lot friendlier to use than the Muziic player mentioned previously. Still it has a long way to go to match Cloud Player or Until Am for that matter.
Pros
- Song image on turntable
- Decent effects
- Synch works well
- Lots of shortcuts
Cons
- No double click reset of controls
- No playlists functions
- Crashes when play with effects too much
Visit Website
5. Push Mixer
Chemical records, a UK music and fashion distribution business has developed their own online DJ mixer called the Push Mixer. And a fine piece of work it is too. When this player loads in your browser you instantly get the feeling that these guys love DJing and everything that goes along with it.
5. Push Mixer
Chemical records, a UK music and fashion distribution business has developed their own online DJ mixer called the Push Mixer. And a fine piece of work it is too. When this player loads in your browser you instantly get the feeling that these guys love DJing and everything that goes along with it.
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| PUSH interface |
Unlike many of the mixers mentioned in this article, Push doesn't use Soundcloud or other such services. Instead it uses a library of licensed music, divided across a number of genres. Songs are all easy to find using the inbuilt library dialog box. You can simply drag and drop tracks from the library onto the desired turntable. It shows spinning song art and has some quality filters and an excellent synch function.
There is also the standard waveform displays and a number of effects. However I found the effects are somewhat limited.
Another small peeve is that you have to register in order to play full length songs ( unregistered users can only play 30 second clips ). Also, once registered you are then limited to playing tracks for a combined total of 200 times. I guess that is plenty enough time to get a handle on things and to be fair they do offer the ability to purchase a packets of 1000 plays for as little as 5 pounds.
The music on offer is mostly in the DrumNBass, Dubstep, House and Trance genres which seems to be the websites main forte. But there is also a healthy amount of chillout music and other genres too.
Another plus is that you can create multiple playlists which you can give unique names ! Hooray !
Overall Push is a pretty snazzy player that hits the spot on many levels.
Pros
Cons
Visit Website
Pros
- Song images on decks
- Nice filters
- Slick presentation
- Sort library by bmp and key
- Full screen mode
- Synch works really well
Cons
- Limited number of free plays
- Lag issues occasionally
- Only 3 FX , not labeled
- Occasional issues with drag and drop
Visit Website
So there we have the top 5 free online dj mixers available today. As you can see they all have their good and bad points, with my personal favorites begin Sound Player, Push and perhaps Mixify.
One thing I haven't mentioned so far is how to record your mixes - an essential part of any online DJ's toolkit. Well as you can image with most of the music coming from cloud services it isn't easy for these guys to offer a recording function as it would probably break all kinds of music distribution laws. Maybe they will add a record function to their online mixers in the future but for now your only option would be to use your internal sound card and record the playback with your favorite sound recorder or having the mix output via a line-out port to external recording devices.
ODJMs are a lot of fun and I've really enjoyed using them over the last few months. I can foresee a day when it is possible to replace my current Traktor software with an ODJM for home recording but it would need to include a few vital functions such as better filters, improved effects, iTunes integration, multiple playlists, drag and drop from system folders, double click active resets on all controls and possibly printing or saving to text files of playlists .
So go give them a try and let me know what you think. What would you like to see included in a free online DJ system ?
5 comments :
Nice post psyamb. I didn't know these things even existed. There goes my afternoon
Someone needs to make an easy recording hack for these. I use Windows 7 and recording audio is a nightmare.
Use "audacity" to record. It's free.
Although still in it's infancy as you say a fun toy I would imagine. I found both Ableton and Traktor limited without a controller you can only use on function at a time with a cursor. I guess hotkeys could be a way around it but type-mixing just wouldn't feel right.
Thank you for this wonderful post, specially for the cons and pros, as I used Partycloud.fm a lot but hated the fact it didn't have keyboard shortcuts (huge con :P).
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